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For such an iconic animal, it seems strange that we know next to nothing about the dodo - except, of course, that it is dead. We don't know how it lived, what it ate, how many eggs it sat on or even whether it was fat or thin. But that could all change with a scientific expedition just begun in Mauritius, the remote island in the Indian Ocean where the dodo lived for millions of years before being driven to extinction in the late 17th century, just 80 years after it was sighted by European sailors.British and Dutch scientists have joined forces to excavate a unique dodo burial ground where the bones of hundreds and possibly thousands of birds have been preserved in marshland for more than 10,000 years. It will be the first time scientists have had access to well-preserved dodo remains that have remained untouched. At last, some light maybe shed on a mysterious and emblematic creature that has come to epitomise how easy it is for man to wipe out a species.The Mare aux Songes area of Mauritius was once a dry coastal forest which later became marshland.
Last year scientists said they thought the site contained a mass of bones from a rich variety of animals - giant tortoises, dodos and other extinct birds and reptiles - all of which long pre-date the arrival of the first humans to inhabit Mauritius in 1598. "The discovery is of huge importance and will give us a new understanding of how dodos lived," explained Julian Hume, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Natural History Museum in London who has helped to organise the expedition.
View: Full Article | Source: Independent
Electric fish emit weak signals from an organ in their tails that serves as a battery. Different emissions signal aggression, fear or courtship. While the fish can apparently understand each others' warning signals, "They seem to only choose to mate with other fish having the same signature waveform as their own," explains neurobiologist Matt Arnegard of Cornell University.But in the Ivindo River in Gabon, Arnegard and colleagues have found fish with the same DNA emitting distinctly different signals. The fish are likely on the verge of splitting into two species, the researchers announced today."We think we are seeing evolution in action," Arnegard said. Because electricity is easily transmitted in water, many species of amphibians and fish have adapted to detect weak electric signals. Some, like sharks, use it to find prey. Others, like the electric eel, generate deadly voltages for defense or to kill prey. Others emit and detect electrical signals primarily as a means to communicate with their own kind.Electric fish are called mormyrids.
The roughly 20 distinct species that have been identified in the river, by their varying DNA, each emit distinct signals, which is the basis for Arnegard's new conclusion.The process of splitting one species into two is called speciation. Scientists figure there are two ways it can happen. Groups can become geographically separated and take on new traits as their genes mutate. Or, animals can stay together but for some reason mate selectively to form distinct groups. The latter method, called sympatric speciation, is seen to be less likely and somewhat controversial."Many scientists claim it's not feasible," Arnegard said. "But it could be a detection problem because speciation occurs over so many generations."
View: Full Article | Source: Live Science
She is all legs and after 27 years, she is showing not one but 666 of her rarely seen limbs.After years of searching, scientists have rediscovered Illacme plenipes, a millipede that is the world's leggiest creature, in a tiny patch of San Benito County, California. This type of millipede was first discovered in 1926.The word millipede literally means a thousand feet. In reality, no millipede has so many. The I. plenipes, however, comes closest, with the females possessing up to 750 legs based on previous finds.Over the course of three trips to the California Floristic Province, scientists found four male specimens and three females, which they report in the June 8 issue of the journal Nature.The females, as in turned out, were not only longer at about 1.3 inches, but also had up to 666 legs. The males averaged 0.6 inches in length and walked on no more than 402 legs.
The males and females probably start out at the same size. Females grow larger and develop more body segments, explained the report's co-author Paul Marek of East Carolina University. "They are also wider."It isn't known if the females have accelerated growth or just keep growing once the males have stopped. "Females may just continue to add segments," Marek told LiveScience. "It remains a mystery."
View: Full Article | Source: Live Science
Submitted by Pendekar Timur: The Great Wall of China, Rome's Colosseum, India's Taj Mahal and three architectural marvels from Latin America were among the new seven wonders of the world chosen in a global poll released on Saturday. Jordan's Petra was the seventh winner. Peru's Machu Picchu, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid also made the cut.About 100 million votes were cast by the Internet and cellphone text messages, said New7Wonders, the nonprofit organization that conducted the poll.The seven beat out 14 other nominated landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, Easter Island in the Pacific, the Statue of Liberty, the Acropolis, Russia's Kremlin and Australia's Sydney Opera House.The pyramids of Giza, the only surviving structures from the original seven wonders of the ancient world, were assured of retaining their status in addition to the new seven after indignant Egyptian officials said it was a disgrace they had to compete.The campaign to name new wonders was launched in 1999 by the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber. Almost 200 nominations came in, and the list was narrowed to the 21 most-voted by the start of 2006. Organizers admit there was no foolproof way to prevent people from voting more than once for their favorite.
A Peruvian in national costume held up Macchu Picchu's award to the sky and bowed to the crowd with his hands clasped, eliciting one of the biggest cheers from the audience of 50,000 people at a soccer stadium in Portugal's capital, Lisbon.Many jeered when the Statue of Liberty was announced as one of the candidates. Portugal was widely opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.Another Swiss adventurer, Bertrand Piccard, pilot of the first hot-air balloon to fly nonstop around the world, announced one of the winners — then launched into an appeal for people to combat climate change and stand up for human rights before being ushered off the stage.The Colosseum, the Great Wall, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal and Petra had been among the leading candidates since January, while the Statue of Christ Redeemer received a surge in votes more recently.The Statue of Liberty and Australia's Sydney Opera House were near the bottom of the list from the start.
View: Full Article | Source: Yahoo! News
Anthony North: Paranormal research is more than narrating the cases an investigator comes across. Also important is the idea that the cases can be analysed in order to provide theory for what is going on. As data leads to theory in science, so too with the world of mystery.The problem with this approach, however, is that few theorists have achieved the audience they deserve. However, some stand out above the throng. Perhaps the greatest of those was psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung.Young Jung: Arthur C Clarke once commented that not only did the paranormal not have its Einstein, it was still awaiting its Aristotle. I disagree with this statement. Jung fits the bill more than adequately, rationalizing the paranormal like no other researcher.Jung was born in 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, the son of a very spiritual family. As an adult he became vain and obsessive and had many affairs, having almost a sex addiction. However, he was very much a genius, trapped between the academic and the more esoteric.This was apparent to him from the age of three when he began to have mystical dreams and was convinced another person lived inside him. He named this person Philemon and saw him as age old wisdom.
The psychologist: If Jung hadn’t become an academic, he would have become a great medium, already exhibiting elements of other personalities inside him. However, he trained medically in Basel before moving to a Zurich psychiatric clinic in 1900, eventually becoming a student of Freud.Vital to this period was his identification of two states of mind - introversion and extroversion. The mentally healthy person formed a balance between these two extremes, finding himself and realising who he is through a process Jung was to call Individuation.Most people only discovered their true self following what Jung termed a ‘midlife crisis’, when material values failed to satisfy, requiring an understanding of the more esoteric.
View: Full Article | Source: Beyond the Blog
Scientists said that a lake in southern Chile that mysteriously disappeared last month developed a crack which allowed the water to drain away. A buildup of water opened a crack in an ice wall along one side of the lake. Water flowed through the crack into a nearby fjord and from there into the sea, leaving behind a dry lake-bed littered with icebergs, scientists told Chilean state television on Tuesday."It looks like it's slowly filling up with water again," said Andres Rivera, a glacier expert who headed a team which recently flew over the lake in a bid to solve the mystery.The lake is situated in the Magallanes region in Patagonia and is fed by melt-water from glaciers. Earlier this year it had a surface area of 4 to 5 hectares (10-12 acres) -- about the size of 10 soccer fields.Scientists noticed it had disappeared during a routine patrol of the area in May.Rivera said the incident was evidence of the effects of global warming.
View: Full Article | Source: Yahoo! News
On August 23, 1971 the first of many images appeared on the kitchen floor of Maria Gomez Pereira's home in Belmez, Spain. This first image was of a man and was so disturbing in its grimacing appearance that it prompted Maria to have the cement floor torn out and replaced. A week later, the second of what would be many unique portraits made its ghostly impression on the floor, which the family also - understandably - wanted destroyed. Hearing about the faces, the Mayor of Belmez had part of the floor removed and saved to try to determine what was causing the ghostly faces.Under the slab, human remains from a medieval cemetery were found and properly reburied off the site, however two weeks later yet another face appeared on the new floor. More and more faces in increasingly elaborate arrangements came and went on the floor until the family finally sealed the kitchen, however this simply resulted in more faces appearing elsewhere in the house. By now well publicized and attracting the attention of investigators, the phenomena was intensively studied, including the placement of microphones which reportedly picked up sounds inaudible to the human ear that seemed to be muttering strange languages and agonizing moans seemingly choreographed to the grimaces and painful contortions of the faces on the kitchen floor.
Maria died in 2004, however the faces have continued, calling into question theories that the old woman had been faking the whole affair. Further, chemical studies of the cement have been somewhat unsatisfying, with multiple potential explanations being advanced, from acids to paint but none of them really seem to cover all aspects of the phenomena.The annals of the paranormal are replete with images of people on inanimate objects. From Christ himself to Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, we recognize faces in patterns and often attribute these images to a wide variety of people. Most of these can easily be explained by wishful thinking and recognizing patterns among the chaos, but sometimes a story can be attached to the phenomena that might suggest that the spirit of a disembodied human may be able to manifest a picture of themselves that the living can see.
View: Full Article | Source: The paranormal report
Most ghosts are hopelessly vague, so much so that one wonders if you can accomplish anything at all in the afterlife. They appear and disappear transiently, leave us muffled and hard to understand EVPs, and for the life of them can't do anything on demand or repeatable to prove their existance beyond all shadow of a doubt. Of course, there are exceptions.Two resounding examples come in the form of mediums who have made contact with dead novelists and composers. This in itself isn't out of the ordinary, famous people are allegedly channeled all the time. But this duet of cases stands above the crowd in that actual artistic work resulted from the contact in such a way that the medium should not have been capable of faking.The first is the famous Mrs. Rosemary Brown who died in 2001. Early in life she had been visited by the ghost of Franz Liszt. At the time she had no idea who this white haired man in the flowing black cassock was until she saw a picture of him years later. At the age of seven he told her that he would make her a famous musician one day, before dissappearing for decades. He showed back up unexpectedly in 1964, and literally began releasing new compositions through her. He was soon joined by the spirits of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Chopin and others. Some of them dictated notes directly to her, others controlled her hands on the piano and she wrote the notes down. Often, she couldn't even play the compositions as they were beyond her skills as a musician, but as she got older her piano playing markedly improved. She claimed this was because Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Liszt had been tutoring her on the piano!
The consensus from the music world was, mostly, that the compositions bore a strong resemblance to the works of the composers. Some even stated that the compositions couldn't be faked without years of training, which she clearly never had. Some of the pieces were simple, but others were apparently very complex. In any case, Mrs. Brown was either a very talented composer herself, or she really was in contact with the spirits of a host of deceased composers.The other outstanding example is that of Mrs. J. H. Curran of St. Louis, Missouri who in 1913 made contact through a ouija board with a spirit calling herself Patience Worth. Claiming to have lived in 17th century America and killed by indians, the spirit of Patiences Worth dictated to Mrs. Curran a number of novels from a variety of different historical periods in multiple different literary styles. From a period novel written in medieval English, which Mrs. Curran had no way of studying, to her novel "Hope Trueblood" set in the 19th century which recieved critical acclaim even from reviewers that had no idea that the novel had been dictated by a spirit.
View: Full Article | Source: The Paranormal Report
Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly. The tropical blue moon butterfly has developed a way of fighting back against parasitic bacteria. Six years ago, males accounted for just 1% of the blue moon population on two islands in the South Pacific. But by last year, the butterflies had evolved a gene to keep the bacteria in check and male numbers were up to about 40% of the population. Scientists believe the comeback is due to "suppressor" genes that control the Wolbachia bacteria that is passed down from the mother and kills the male embryos before they hatch. "To my knowledge, this is the fastest evolutionary change that has ever been observed," said Sylvain Charlat, of University College London, UK, whose study appears in the journal Science. Gregory Hurst, a University College researcher who worked with Mr Charlat, added: "We usually think of natural selection as acting slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.
"But the example in this study happened in the blink of the eye, in terms of evolutionary time, and is a remarkable thing to get to observe." The team first documented the massive imbalance in the sex ratio of the blue moon butterfly (Hypolimnas bolina) on the Samoan islands of Savaii and Upolu in 2001. In 2006, they started a new survey after an increase in reports of male sightings at Upolo. They found that the numbers of male butterflies had either reached or were approaching those of females.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: A species of egg-laying mammal, named after TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough, is not extinct as was previously thought, say scientists. On a recent visit to Papua's Cyclops Mountains, researchers uncovered burrows and tracks made by the Attenborough's long-beaked echidna. The species is only known to biologists through a specimen from 1961, which is housed in a museum in the Netherlands. The team will return to Papua next year to find and photograph the creature. The month-long expedition by scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) involved travelling to parts of the mountain range, covered by thick jungle, which had remained unexplored for more than 45 years. Jonathan Baillie, ZSL's Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (Edge) programme manager, said: "We hope that Sir David Attenborough will be delighted to hear that his namesake species is still surviving in the wilds of the Papaun jungle."
The creature had not been recorded since a Dutch botanist collected the only known specimen in the cloud forest of the Cyclops Mountains in 1961. As a result, it was widely assumed that the shoe box-sized species (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was extinct. But while the Edge team were in the area, they spoke to local tribespeople who said that they had seen the creature as recently as 2005. The scientists also discovered "nose pokes", holes in the ground made by the echidnas as they stuck their long noses into soil to feed. In the programme's blog, Dr Baillie wrote: "Attenborough's echidna is one of five monotremes (egg-laying mammals) that first inhabited the Earth around the time of the dinosaurs.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
A group that searched for bigfoot in the U.P. woods this weekend plans to return in August. A four-day expedition in Marquette County by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, collecting evidence supporting the existence of �sasquatches� began with mixed results but concluded with �excitement,� according to BFRO organizer/ researcher Matthew Moneymaker. Just after midnight Saturday, veteran BFRO investigators Pam Porter of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Don Young of Phillips, Wis., saw �grainy blips� through the viewfinder of a thermal imaging camera near where a previous bigfoot sighting had been reported, Moneymaker said, and they caught some of what they saw on film. About the same time, Minnesota-based researcher Chris Perlock filmed �something behind trees� on his thermal camera, �possibly hunkered down or crawling,� Moneymaker said.�We are very excited,� Moneymaker said. �We definitely cannot claim to have bigfoot on video, or even that what we have will impress the rest of the world. We still have to review the footage. But I can say that these are our best thermal images yet, on two cameras.� �We�re going to alter our schedule in order to come back to Marquette in August,� Moneymaker said.
�We�re going into that area again with more equipment.� The exact location will remain confidential, Moneymaker said. The next BFRO expedition is scheduled for Northern Utah July 19-22, followed by New Mexico on Aug. 2-4.It was Wednesday night, Moneymaker said, as BFRO investigators were attempting to �lure� bigfoot into camera range with a series of �howls� and other sounds that Porter captured a single response with her audio recorder. The tape of that response was evaluated during a Thursday briefing by the rest of the BFRO team.�We weren�t sure what it was,� Porter said, �but we were able to rule out an owl, a coyote, or a wolf. It was not any of those animals.�Thursday night that area was �uneventful,� Moneymaker said, and the decision was make to move the search area to remote site near Ishpeming, with only the Minnesota team of Perlock and Andy Peeper remaining behind in their tent. Friday night Perlock and Peeper heard �bi-pedal footsteps� and other sounds.
View: Full Article | Source: Daily Press
In terms of height they are worlds apart.The world's tallest man, Bao Xishun today shook hands with He Pingping who claims to be Earth's shortest.But these two men actually hail from the same region of Inner Mongolia. While Mr Xishun, 56, towers above everyone at an astonishing 7.9ft, 19-year-old Mr Pingping is a mere 2.4ft high. Bao Xishun, a herdsman from Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, was recently married in a traditional ceremony to a 28-year-old saleswoman from his hometown. At 5ft 6" Xia Shujian only comes up to his elbow and is half his age. He claims he was of normal height until he was 16 when he experienced a growth spurt and reached his present height seven years later.Mr Xishun was confirmed as the tallest person by the Guinness Book of Records last year. Mr Pingping was born nearby in Wulanchabu city, Inner Mongolia. His father claims he was only the size of an adult's palm at birth.
View: Full Article | Source: Daily Mail
Injuries and illness among dogs and cats seems to be higher during full moon than at other times of the month, a new study finds. But researchers don't know why. The study, reported in the July 15 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, finds emergency room visits for these pets increases during or near the full moon. In studying 11,940 cases at the Colorado State University Veterinary Medical Center, the researchers found the risk of emergency room visits to be 23 percent higher for cats and 28 percent higher for dogs on days surrounding full moons. The types of emergencies ranged from cardiac arrest to trauma. "If you talk to any person, from kennel help, nurse, front-desk person to doctor, you frequently hear the comment on a busy night, 'Gee is it a full moon?'" said study leader Raegan Wells of the university's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "There is the belief that things are busier on full-moon nights."
Belief does not make for good science, however. And despite the newfound numbers, Wells doesn't know what sort of lunacy is at play. "It is difficult to interpret the clinical significance of these findings," she said. Research into mysterious lunar connections has a long history of baffling and mixed results. A pair of studies in 2001 looked into how many humans are bitten by animals during full moons. British researchers found a lunar link, while the separate study in Australia uncovered no connection.
View: Full Article | Source: Live Science
"Virtually all articulated specimens of Archaeopteryx are in this posture, exhibiting a classic pose of head thrown back, jaws open, back and tail reflexed backward and limbs contracted," said Kevin Padian, professor of integrative biology and curator in the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley. He Faux (pronounced "Fox") published their findings this week in the journal Paleobiology.Some animals found in this posture may have suffocated in ash during a volcanic eruption, consistent with the fact that many fossils are found in ash deposits, Faux and Padian said. But many other possibilities exist, including disease, brain trauma, severe bleeding, thiamine deficiency or poisoning.
View: Full Article | Source: Live Science
Scientists have described a new primitive dinosaur species, Eocursor parvus, which lived in the Late Triassic - about 210 million years ago. Unearthed in South Africa's Free State, the creature appears to have been a small, agile plant-eater. The team tells a Royal Society journal that Eocursor sheds light on the early evolution of the Ornithischia. This important group included the well known herbivororous dinosaurs Triceratops and Stegosaurus. The fossil specimen was first identified in 1993 but only recently appraised. It is by far the most complete example of a Triassic ornithischian known, comprising skull and skeletal material, including bones of the backbone, arms, pelvis and legs. In its day, Eocursor would have been little bigger than a fox. Its bone structure and light form suggest it moved swiftly. The scientists say the creature provides the earliest evidence for the origins of many skeletal characteristics seen in the ornithischian group, including the backward-pointing pelvis.
A comparison has been done across a wide range of specimens and this indicates that Late Triassic ornithischians were really quite rare. The group then diversified in the subsequent early Jurassic, filling empty herbivorous niches following mass extinctions of other creatures. "We know ornithischians were a very successful and important group of plant-eating dinosaurs that first appeared 220 million years ago, in the late part of the Triassic Period," explained Dr Richard Butler, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, London, UK.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Chinese researchers uncovered the fossilised remains of the flightless giant in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia. The researchers had originally thought they had found the bones of a tyrannosaur - the group of dinosaurs to which T. rex belongs - due to their large size. The team has established that the creature lived about 70 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous Period. According to lines of arrested growth detected on its bones, it died in its 11th year of life. "It was a very surprising discovery, not at all what we expected," said Xu Ling, a palaeontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and co-author on the Nature paper. "We think it's the largest feathered animal ever to have been discovered."
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Paleontologists and students of the penguin lineage had assumed that penguins evolved in colder climates in the Antarctic and in New Zealand and had only moved to lower latitudes closer to the equator about 10 million years ago -- long after significant global cooling about 34 million years ago."We tend to think of penguins as being cold-adapted species, even the small penguins in equatorial regions today," said Julia Clarke, a paleontologist and assistant professor of marine, Earth and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh."But the new fossils date back to one of the warmest periods in 65 million years of Earth's history. The evidence indicates that penguins reached low latitude regions more than 30 million years prior to our previous estimates."
View: Full Article | Source: Yahoo! News
Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, co-director of research at the site, said that the newly discovered tooth could be as much as 1.2 million years old. "Now we finally have the anatomical evidence of the hominids that fabricated tools more than one million years ago," the statement said. It was not yet possible to confirm to which species the tooth belonged, it said, but initial analyses "allow us to suppose it is an ancestor of Homo antecessor"
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Then at the top, the bird could simply glide to the next thermal and in this way it could certainly travel 200 miles a day," he told BBC News. Professor Chatterjee and colleagues estimated the flight parameters of fossil Argentavis bones and plugged the information into computer flight models. The results indicate the bird - which would have rivalled some light aeroplanes for size - had all the makings of a high-performance glider.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Anthony North: It can get to you. It can grip you, turn you inside out, and even kill you. At least, that�s what some people believe. But even if you don�t believe, the idea of the curse can still send a frightening tingle down the spine. From witches sticking pins in an effigy, to the Voodoo bokor placing a curse on you, occult literature is full of incidences of successful curses, driving people mad and making them have accidents. But is there a reality to the curse? Coincidence: The usual sceptic�s answer to the curse is that life is full of coincidences, and some time, some place, life will throw up incidences that suggest a curse could be at work. But in reality, it is nothing at all. It�s just the inevitability of chance.Those who take a Jungian view would add synchronicity to coincidence. Here, coincidences become meaningful, as if your own mind is affecting the world about you. In this scenario, if you believe a curse can work, then you make it happen yourself.And then there are the people who just seem to have bad luck. Obstacles rise up before them, and they can form an attitude that they are cursed throughout life. Studies suggest luck is all to do with being able to calculate odds. Is this important to the issue?
A calculating mind: Clearly if you can calculate odds better than the average, good luck will seem to cling to you; and equally clearly, if you cannot, then you'll go through life from one disaster to another. In one sense, this can be related to an optimistic or pessimistic state of mind.For instance, the optimist tends to walk through life, whilst the pessimist expects to see disaster and so he does. Indeed, pessimism can have an effect if you think you're cursed. And it is all to do with a feeling of absolute hopelessness.There is a medical term called �vegal inhibition.� This is a state where a sense of hopelessness slowly shuts down the autonomic nervous system. If it goes to the ultimate, death can be the result. A belief in a curse can, it seems, be a killer.
View: Full Article | Source: Beyond the Blog
This isn't just mumbo jumbo. It is the result of detailed academic research overseen by a leading cleric of the Church of England which normally has a vested interest in playing such things down. But even the Church can't disguise the extent of this occult revival. The survey found only two places in the land where it fails to flourish - the industrial Midlands of England - which is a bit short of the open green spaces most witches prefer (nowhere safe to land your broomstick), and parts of Western Scotland, which is far too cold and bleak for anything.
View: Full Article | Source: CBS News
Authorities in a remote area of eastern India have appealed to the public not to conduct witch hunts following rumours that roving bands of witches had been killing people swept the region, media reports said Wednesday. Panic has spread through Chhattisgarh state following reports that witches were knocking on people�s doors and asking for onions and chapatti � local staple foods � and that anyone who handed out the food would die. Chhattisgarh, India�s most impoverished state, remains deeply traditional and superstitions and beliefs in the occult are rampant. Last year at least 10 women were killed there on suspicion of being witches. �We have asked people not to believe in gossip mongering and try and think rationally,� Subodh Kumar Singh, a local government official told the Indian Express newspaper. �Awareness campaigns have also been launched asking people not to harass women by calling them �tonhi� (witch),� Singh was quoted as saying.
Many people, including local politicians, daubed prayers written in cow dung on their walls in the belief that it would ward off witches, the newspaper reported. The paper did not report any actual deaths attributed to the current rumours. Local officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
View: Full Article | Source: Daily Times
Residents in County Down have raised the possibility of a UFO sighting above the skies of Bangor. Several callers to BBC Northern Ireland have reported a series of strange orange lights in the night sky. Air traffic control at Belfast International Airport said it had also received reports about the sightings, including one from the Coastguard. However, the airport said it had no record of any aircraft in the sky at the time. The callers said the sightings had been made on Saturday evening. Clifford Rossbottom from Bangor told the BBC: "There were three orange globes - nearly in a straight line - they were an absolutely fascinating sight. "I watched them for five minutes, and then very slowly, they just disappeared. "The only thing I thought it could have been was three high-flying aircraft. "If that is not the case, then I have no idea, and the only other thing I can think of is in fact that they were UFOs."
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Nuclear physicist and UFO researcher, Stanton Friedman will be speaking at the Mutual UFO Network�s (MUFON) Annual Symposium in Denver on August 10th, 2007. He will be the keynote speaker at the opening Dinner that will commence a weekend of lectures from some of the most prominent UFO researchers in the US, Canada, and the UK. Friedman is a board member and scientific consultant to MUFON, the largest civilian UFO research organization in the US.In 1978 Friedman, interviewed Jesse Marcel, the Air Force intelligence officer first on the scene to a reported UFO crash outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Marcel confirmed Stanton�s suspicions that Marcel did not misidentify a weather balloon for a flying disc of unknown origins. They really had found something unexplainable. This interview along with other research done by Friedman and his colleagues launched the Roswell incident into one of the world�s most intriguing legends, and made the small New Mexico town a household name.
Friedman will be speaking on the 60 years of Roswell along with other prominent UFO researchers. George Knapp, a Television news journalist from Las Vegas, Nevada, who broke the story of Bob Lazar, a man who claimed to work at a secret Air Force installation in the Nevada desert known as Area 51. This story made Area 51 famous, and started the second largest UFO legend next to Roswell.
View: Full Article | Source: PR.com
Bill Knell: On March 13, 1997, unexplained lights appeared over Phoenix, Arizona. I was in town when the mysterious event took place. While authorities would like you to believe that these were merely military flares, former Arizona Governor Fife Symington says there is much more to the story. Symington now admits that he was among the hundreds of witnesses who saw a huge triangular object in the skies over Phoenix. The former Governor made a number of statements about the Phoenix Lights mystery to Leslie Kean, Special Correspondent to The Prescott Daily Courier. The statements were included in an article by Kean published in the Courier on March 18, 2007. In that article, the former Arizona Governor describes what he saw on March 13, 1997:"It was enormous and inexplicable," he said. "Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too."Symington was referring to a V-shaped object with lights on it seen in the skies over Phoenix ten years ago. Some estimated the lights to be the size of a football field, while others said they could have been a mile long.
He continued to describe his own sighting of the triangular object: "It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical." The former Arizona Governor revealed the object to be a "craft of unknown origin."While Symington hasn't been the only political figure in Arizona to comment on the Phoenix Lights, he stands alone in his admission that they were more than just flares. When asked to comment on the Phoenix Lights in 2000, Senator John McCain said, "That has never been fully explained." He also quickly added, "But I have to tell you that I do not have any evidence whatsoever of aliens or UFOs."Fife Symington says he called the commander of Luke Air Force Base, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and a General with the Arizona National Guard back in 1997 to ask about the lights. None of them were able to provide him with any answers and seemed "perplexed." One of the problems with the sightings were the multitude of explanations available at the time.
View: Full Article | Source: PR-GB.com
It could be proof there really are little green men out there - or it could just be a close encounter with something far less alien. A couple spotted five round orange objects moving silently across the skies over the city on Saturday night in one of the first UFO sightings this year.Liam King, who was visiting Norwich from Colchester with his girlfriend, spotted the glowing orbs as he was walking along St Giles' Street, Upper St Giles' Street and Earlham Road at 10.35pm.Mr King and his girlfriend were walking back to their hotel on Earlham Road when they saw the mystery objects.He said: �When we first saw the lights we were walking west up St Giles Street where it was reasonably quiet - and quiet enough to hear that the objects were not emitting any sound. �Just as we lost the first two behind the roofs of the buildings on Upper St Giles Street we saw a third travelling in the same direction, then a fourth and a fifth.�We were able to view the fifth light more clearly and were able to see that the light was flying between us and the nearest cloud.�Another man, who also saw the UFOs but did not want to be named, said:
�It was amazing - there were six fireballs in the sky, one was much brighter than the others. I took pictures on my camera but they've come out as white fuzzy blobs. When you zoom in it looks like a spiral in spirals. I watched and they all started disappearing, then, this sounds crazy, but one shot into the other one at a speed far faster than any plane could go. And then they shot into space. I feel silly saying it - but what I saw was not normal.�The Norfolk UFO Society confirmed Mr King's description is a very common sighting of an unidentified object.John Sayer, 54, from the organisation said: �Orange is quite a common description and so are balls of light.�It seems the Norwich area is a hot spot for UFO activity - a lot aren't reported, but the city has one of the highest number of sightings.�Mr Sayer of Stratton Strawless had around six reports of sightings in the city during the autumn months last year.Spotters of unidentified flying objects over Hellesdon saw a black triangular craft above Low Road on August 23.
View: Full Article | Source: Evening News 24
Several people reported seeing a jellyfish-shaped unidentified flying object about 8pm in Shanghai on Monday. A man surnamed Zhu told Shanghai Morning Post yesterday that he saw the UFO in the sky at the crossroads of Jiujiang Road and Xizang Road M. in Huangpu District that night."It's definitely not a kite," Zhu told the newspaper. "It was flying quite high."Zhu said the UFO was a blue-colored object and hovered around the area for several minutes and then flew away.He tried to take a picture of the UFO with his cell phone, but since it was far away the photo only revealed a blurry image of a shiny object.Zhu said the UFO was spotted by more than 100 people in the area, but so far, no clear picture of it has been released.Experts at Sheshan Observatory have not yet responded to the report.An unidentified flying object was seen above the boundary between Hongkou and Yangpu districts about 9pm on April 11.
Though many witnesses were convinced it was a UFO � the color of the V-shaped object changed regularly from red to blue to green and then yellow � an expert said it was just a night-light kite.UFOs appeared over Shanghai and its neighboring area in 1987, 1990, 1991 and 1999. They were acknowledged as UFOs as no physics theory could explain their movement in the air, according to previous reports.
View: Full Article | Source: Shanghair Daily
A newspaper article with a headline about a witness seeing a ghost conveyed the meaning that she was "demented" but did not defame her, a jury has decided. The New South Wales Supreme Court jury of four took about an hour to conclude that Therese Mallik had not established she had been defamed.Ms Mallik had taken action in the New South Wales Supreme Court against Hunter Valley Independent Newspapers Pty Ltd – publishers of the Cessnock Independent – and its managing director, proprietor and editor, William McGeown.The front page Cessnock Independent article, published in October 2005, was headlined: "Witness sees a ghost over Cremator".The story referred to a Land and Environment Court hearing about the possibility of increasing the number of bodies burnt at the St Patricks crematorium in the Hunter region.In the article, Ms Mallik was described as the "leader of the Nulkaba Residence Group against the cremator".It said that in her evidence to the environment court "she claimed to have seen a ghostlike figure in the clouds".
Yesterday, her barrister, David Caspersonn, told the four-person jury the article conveyed three defamatory meanings, including that Ms Mallik was "demented".While the jurors agreed it had that meaning, they decided it was not defamatory.They also rejected Mr Caspersonn's submission that the article conveyed the meaning Ms Mallik had given evidence that was "worthless, absurd and lacking in any credibility".
View: Full Article | Source: news.com.au
A Malaysian museum which had defied calls for it to stop a popular exhibition on supernatural beings Friday cancelled it after an Islamic fatwa, or religious decree, was issued, state media said. Thousands of visitors have been drawn to western Negri Sembilan state's musuem since it launched the ghost and genie exhibition on March 10, due to run until May 31.Its curator had resisted calls from Malaysia's arts minister and a mufti for it to be shut down amid criticism that encouraging a belief in ghosts was un-Islamic.But Negeri Sembilan's state secretary Kamaruddin Siaraf, also chair of the state museum board, said Friday the exhibition was terminated after Malaysia's National Fatwa Council ruled against such events.He said the decision was made out of respect for the council's views, the state Bernama news agency reported.The National Fatwa Council Thursday reportedly ruled that exhibitions on ghosts, ghouls and supernatural beings were forbidden, as they could undermine the faith of Muslims."Supernatural beings are beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
We don't want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs," council chair Abdul Shukor Husin was quoted as saying in the Malay-language daily Berita Harian Friday.Abdul Shukor said the council's decision would be presented to all of Malaysia's state governments for gazetting as religious law."Only state governments have the power to take action, especially concerning the ghostly exhibitions," he said.Malaysians have a lingering fascination with all things supernatural, despite the criticism.A belief in spirits and black magic used to be common in rural Malaysia, bred on myths and superstitions. It was used to gain power and wealth, and to harm enemies.
View: Full Article | Source: Agence France Presse
Paranormal investigators at a 15th century castle want volunteers to help them 'interview' resident ghosts. Bodelwyddan Castle in Denbighshire is said to have a number of spooks who make their presence known. But as castle records were destroyed by fire in the 1920s, no-one knows if the spirits are from a former school in the grounds or a wartime military hospital. Paranormal investigation team member Laura Whitley said: "We use various divination methods, like an interview." She added: "Once we establish there is someone there, we use the various methods to try and get a conversation going. "We use a series of "yes - no" questions to establish who's there and what their story is. "We don't necessarily have the records to attach names to whoever comes through, so there's a lot to find out." The castle, set in 260 acres (105 hectares), has one verified gruesome incident to its name - the discovery in 1829 of human bones set into a wall near one of the chimneys. The find was noted in the diary of Sir John Hay Williams, whose family owned the castle for around 200 years.
During World War One, the estate was used as a recuperation hospital and was last used as a private girls' school for more than 60 years. The venue's marketing officer, Viccie Beech, said volunteers for the paranormal investigation team would help out with evening and overnight vigils attended by the public. She claimed using an upturned glass - not an Ouija board - had proved the most successful method of allowing spirits to communicate. However, other techniques were also used include dowsing rods, spinning crystals and an electronic detector.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Anthony North: A major area of paranormal activity is possession. The phenomenon is said to involve the taking over of the mind by an ‘entity’ from outside the mind. During possession the whole persona of the individual disappears, leaving only the entity.The history of the paranormal is full of such incidences. But what is the reality of the phenomenon? Does a real ‘entity’ invade the mind, or can answers be found in the psychology of the experiencer? Or is the answer somewhere in between? Types of invasion: There are four main areas of possession. First of all we have demonic, where the person is said to be possessed by a supernatural demon. Another popular form of possession is reincarnation, where a ‘past life’ is said to take over the host.Spiritualism offers many cases of possession, with mediums contacting, and being taken over by, a spirit of a dead person. The practice has now advanced to Channelling, where a discarnate being takes over the person to impart spiritual philosophy.We can see that entities can seem to come from many areas of the supernatural, but does the subject suffer from too many ‘tags’? Can we better understand what is going on by ignoring the places entities are said to come from and see if they are ‘internal’ rather than external?
Known Mechanisms: There are three areas of mind/brain phenomena that could offer rudimentary answers to possession. In the phenomenon of Multiple Personality, it is believed that the mind can fragment to the point that different aspects of mind appear to be separate personalities.Another area is the Split Brain concept, where it is known that the left and right cerebral hemispheres of the brain can operate independently. The left brain is a logician, whilst the right is emotional, or artistic. We normally live through the left brain, but the right can take over, adding fantasy, as if another ‘personality’ is in residence.Finally, knowledge imparted through ‘entities’ can often be accurate and substantial. Here, cryptomnesia – the ability of the mind to remember obscure facts – can offer an answer to this knowledge.
View: Full Article | Source: Beyond the Blog
The exhibition deftly combines nature and myth, paleontology and anthropology, and delightfully campy models of mythical creatures with real fossils. Upon first entering the exhibition, visitors are greeted by a 17-foot-long, green, European dragon of the sort that legend says Saint George slew. Its sinuous and colorful Chinese counterpart hangs from the ceiling in one of the last rooms of the exhibition. In the mythical water-creatures section, large tentacles and the head of a giant squid-inspired kraken rise from the floor, its body mostly hidden.Mythic Creatures borrows specimens and artifacts from the fossil, art and anthropological collections of the AMNH and other museums, and examines how such objects might have-through imagination, misidentification, speculation or outright deception-given birth to fantastical creatures.
View: Full Article | Source: Live Science
The American author noticed similarities between Hennessy's description and that of a creature reported 500 miles to the west, near Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea, twenty-seven years earlier. In 1944, Duane Hodgkinson, now living in Montana, saw a giant "prehistoric" creature flying over a clearing where he and another soldier were standing. Whitcomb had interviewed Hodgkinson in 2004 and realized, two years later, that both the American veteran and the psychologist had seen a dark flying creature with a long tail but no sign of feathers. Both men used the word "prehistoric." In 2006, Whitcomb showed Hennessy a series of sketches for determining the shape of the head, including the beak and the head appendage. (A similar questionnaire had been given to Hodgkinson two years earlier.) Whitcomb then drew a sketch based on Hennessy's answers, and concluded that Hennessy had seen, in 1971, the same type of creature that Hodgkinson had seen in 1944.
View: Full Article | Source: Eworldwide Press Release
Claims by terrified villagers that "bigfoot"-type hairy giants are roaming the jungles of India's remote northeast have prompted authorities to order an investigation, a local official said. The bizarre sightings have been made in the Garo hills area of Meghalaya state, close to the borders with Bangladesh and Bhutan, with villagers calling the mysterious creatures "Mande Burung" -- or Jungle Man."A team of wildlife officials and other experts will conduct a study to find out if there is any truth in the locals' claims about these hairy giants," said Samphat Kumar, a district magistrate in the West Garo Hills district.The creatures have apparently been talked about and occasionally spotted for years, but sightings have increased in the past month, prompting authorities to look into the matter.One local farmer, 40-year-old Wallen Sangma, said he had seen an entire family of the creatures -- possibly a lowland relative of the Himalayan Yeti, or a cousin of the North American bigfoot and Sasquatch, or Australia's Yowie.
"The sight was frightening: two adults and two smaller ones, huge and bulky, furry," he told an AFP reporter who visited the remote area on Thursday and Friday."Their heads looked as if they were wearing caps, and their colour was blackish-brown," he said, adding the four "monsters" were about 30 to 40 metres (100 to 130 feet) away from him as he looked for firewood in a forested area.
View: Full Article | Source: Yahoo! News
Do some of us avoid tragedy by foreseeing it? Some scientists nowbelieve that the brain really CAN predict events before they happen. Professor Dick Bierman sits hunched over his computer in a darkened room. The gentle whirring of machinery can be heard faintly in the background. He smiles and presses a grubby-looking red button. In the next room, a patient slips slowly inside a hospital brain scanner. If it wasn't for the strange smiles and grimaces that flicker across the woman's face, you could be forgiven for thinking this was just a normal health check. But this scanner is engaged in one of the most profound paranormal experiments of all time, one that may well prove whether or not it is possible to predict the future. For the results - released exclusively to the Daily Mail - suggest that ordinary people really do have a sixth sense that can help them 'see' the future. Such amazing studies - if verified - might help explain the predictive powers of mediums and a range of other psychic phenomena such Extra Sensory Perception, deja vu and clairvoyance.
On a more mundane level, it may account for 'gut feelings' and instinct. The man behind the experiments is certainly convinced. "We're satisfied that people can sense the future before it happens," says Professor Bierman, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam. "We'd now like to move on and see what kind of person is particularly good at it."And Bierman is not alone: his findings mirror the data gathered by other scientists and paranormal researchers both here and abroad.
View: Full Article | Source: This is London
In science, plenty of problems are hard. But perhaps just one is so gruesomely trying that scientists themselves have termed it, well, “the hard problem.” How does consciousness arise—the living, aware experience of being?Some theories hold that it comes from, or is even identical to, electrical and chemical processes known to unfold in the brain. Others say it arises elsewhere: in some even subtler, yet-undiscovered brain processes, or perhaps a mind-stuff quite distinct from the brain—some call it a soul.Few on either side claim to have final answers. But they often argue passionately over who’s at least in the right playing field.Now a group of researchers has begun a study that they say might settle the issue. “We can actually test this, and put and end to all these debates,” said Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. Parnia has spent years studying reports that some cardiac-arrest patients keep having clear, distinct thought processes after they’re clinically dead and detectable brain activity has ceased.
Patients commonly recount these mental experiences, which often include seeing a light at the end of a tunnel, after being revived.Parnia and colleagues aim to put these reports to a test: specific sounds will be played to such patients, and they’ll be asked to recall the sounds after reviving. If they do, it would confirm the accounts of thoughts without brain activity—supporting the claims that “consciousness is a separate, yet undiscovered scientific entity” from the brain, Parnia wrote in a paper in the the April 23 advance online edition of the research journal Medical Hypotheses.The study “looks like an interesting proposal,” wrote David Chalmers, a philosopher and director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, in an email. If the claims are confirmed, it would “pose an interesting challenge for scientists to explain,” remarked Chalmers, author of several books on consciousness.
View: Full Article | Source: World Science
Simon Baron-Cohen: In what sense might something as intrinsically human as the imagination be biological? How could the products of the imagination – a novel, a painting, a sonata, a theory – be thought of as the result of biological matter? After all, such artefacts are what culture is made of. So why invoke biology? In this essay, I will argue that the content of the imagination is of course determined more by culture than biology. But the capacity to imagine owes more to biology than culture.Let’s start with a few definitional issues. What do we mean by ‘imagination’? I do not mean mere imagery, though clearly the imagination may depend on the manipulation of imagery. Imagery is usually the product of one of the five senses (though it can also be generated without any sensory input at all, from the mere act of thinking or dreaming). Imagery typically comprises a mental representation of a state of affairs in the outside, physical world. I don’t want to put you off from reading this essay by littering it with jargon, so let’s just think of a mental representation as a picture in your head. That is what we are going to be calling an image, but that is not the same as imagination. Consider why not.When we create a visual image of a specific object in our mind, the image as a picture of the object has a more or less truthful relationship to that object or outside state of affairs.
If the image is a good, faithful, representation, it depicts the object or state of affairs accurately in all its detail. So, mental images typically have ‘truth relationships’ to the outside world. Of course, to create imagery in the first place depends on having the relevant ‘hardware’. To create a photo, one needs a camera. To create a mental image, one needs a sense organ hooked up to a brain. An eye can do the trick, since the retina contains receptors that can code both position and colour in sufficient detail for the brain to which it is hooked up to create an accurate image. But in the absence of an eye, clearly an ear or a finger can do the trick too. With your ear, you can create an image of where that owl might be. With your finger, you can create an image of where your car-keys are.
View: Full Article | Source: Entelechy Journal
Those superstitious types who freaked out last year when the calendar read 06/06/06 will have something to smile about on the 7th day of the 7th month, 2007. Believing the triple appearance of the number 7 will bring luck, many people are planning important events for this first Saturday in July. Brides and grooms, especially, looking for a little extra dose of marital fortune, are flocking to the altar in droves on 07/07/07, according to wedding watchers. If they only knew what the Chinese were thinking. The number seven is considered lucky due to its frequent and favorable appearance in the Bible, say historians. "As the number of the days of God's first week, of the levels of heaven...of the numbers of angels and trumpets, etc., the number came in the last few centuries BCE to represent divine perfection," said David Frankfurter, professor of religious studies and history at the University of New Hampshire. "Something organized seven-fold meant that it corresponded to God's own arrangement."
Just as some people wouldn't dare get married on a Friday the 13th or live in a house with the address 666, believing in the positive influence of the number seven is just another technique humans use to have some jurisdiction over the chaotic world around them, said Frankfurter. “In our modern American society we have a tendency to look for magical ways to control the world or fate, so numerology is especially important for us,” Frankfurter said. The obsession with numerology—and other para-sciences like astrology—tends to get stronger especially during significant life events like marriages, he added. "It represents Americans' rather weak (compared to Asian cultures') attempt to exert some numerical or calendrical control over important life-cycle, transition, or other crisis situations," Frankfurter told LiveScience.
View: Full Article | Source: Live Science
A tomb of an Egyptian courtier who lived about 4,000 years ago was discovered by Belgian archaeologists, Egypt's culture ministry has said. The team from Leuven Catholic University accidentally found the tomb, one of the best preserved of its time.They were excavating a later burial site at the Deir al-Barsha necropolis near the Nile Valley town of Minya, 225 km south of Cairo.The tomb belonged to Henu, an estate manager and high-ranking official during the first intermediate period, which lasted from 2181 to 2050 BC and was a time of political chaos in ancient Egypt.The archaeologists found Henu's mummy wrapped in linen in a large wooden coffin and a sarcophagus decorated with hieroglyphic texts addressed to the gods Anubis and Osiris.
The tomb contained well-preserved painted wooden statuettes of workers making bricks, women making beer and pounding cereal, and a model of a boat with rowers, a ministry statement said."The statuettes (are of) the best quality of their time. They are characterized by realistic touches and unusual details such as the dirty hands and feet of the brick makers," the statement said, quoting Belgian team leader Harco Willems.
View: Full Article | Source: Alalam.ir
"This is not my day job." So begins Michel Barsoum as he recounts his foray into the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. As a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics, Barsoum never expected his career to take him down a path of history, archaeology, and political science, with materials research mixed in. As a distinguished professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University, his daily routine consists mainly of teaching students about ceramics, or performing research on a new class of materials, the so-called MAX Phases, that he and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s. These modern ceramics are machinable, thermal-shock resistant, and are better conductors of heat and electricity than many metals-making them potential candidates for use in nuclear power plants, the automotive industry, jet engines, and a range of other high-demand systems. Then Barsoum received an unexpected phone call from Michael Carrell, a friend of a retired colleague of Barsoum, who called to chat with the Egyptian-born Barsoum about how much he knew of the mysteries surrounding the building of the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The widely accepted theory-that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps-had not only not been embraced by everyone, but as important had quite a number of holes.
According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water. "It was at this point in the conversation that I burst out laughing," says Barsoum. If the pyramids were indeed cast, he says, someone should have proven it beyond a doubt by now, in this day and age, with just a few hours of electron microscopy. It turned out that nobody had completely proven the theory...yet.
View: Full Article | Source: Live Science
